Surabhi Sharma/2013/India/ 86mins/Bhojpuri and Hindi with English subtitles
Bidesia is Bhojpuri for ‘the one who leaves home’. One in four migrants in Mumbai is Bhojpuri, a people from the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Bambai is their name for Mumbai/Bombay.
The Bidesia in Bambai, like most migrants in this ‘global city’, inhabit its precarious edges. Mobile phones bridge a tenuous connection between home and the city. Along with his meagre belongings though, the migrant brings with him a vibrant musical culture. This music is frequently sexually charged, at times religious, often lyrical and occasionally political.
The Bidesia is both the subject of, and the audience for this music. Bidesia in Bambai is a feature-length film that attempts to make the migrant visible, in a city that renders him illegal and unwanted, in and through the musical sphere that he inhabits. This is a story of music, migration and mobile phones.
Surabhi Sharma
Surabhi Sharma graduated in Psychology and Anthropology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. As part of the theater group Arpana, she acted in plays directed by Satyadev Dubey and Sunil Shanbag. She studied at the Social Communications Media department of Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, and went on to do film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. She is an independent filmmaker. Her feature length documentaries have been screened and awarded at international and national festivals like Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Film South Asia, Kara Film Festival, Festival of Three Continents and Eco Cinema. The films have also been used by grass root campaigns and at universities in both India and abroad.
Kolkata People's Film Festival 